​​​​​​​Afrin ... from a pluralistic, peaceful city to a racist outpost

The main goal in the geographic diagramming program is succeeding in success

In this report, we review establishing settlements, highlighting Turkey's role in building settlements, both in Israel and occupied Afrin, in addition to their goals.

Settlement ... Origin and Definition

Settlement is defined as a large-scale housing process in an occupied land, under the pretext of reconstruction and the establishment of the dominant state's control over the land that it annexed and considers part of it. Its motives may be religious and racist ideology.

Settlement arose as a tributary of the colonial campaigns since the first colonial discoverie of the Spaniards, Portuguese and Dutch. International law defines colonialism as: an expansionist policy practiced by some countries against less developed peoples, who will have to accept some kind of dependency ties towards these countries.

Historical examples 

An example of this is the Israeli presence in the Palestinian lands, which was not just a coincidence, but rather a deliberate plan since ancient times in which Britain participated, and the sick Ottoman Empire facilitated its implementation by allowing the Jews to buy lands as wastel land, as this scheme began from the beginning of the years 1800 until the announcement the establishment of Israel in 1948 after the declaration of the end of the British mandate over Palestine at the end of 1947.

Europe also controlled America in this way. Hundreds of thousands of American Indians who were indigenous to America were killed at their hands, and the Europeans settled their citizens in the areas where the massacres were committed.

The Ottomans also committed massacres against hundreds of thousands of Armenians and Syrians, and displaced thousands of them, and settled their citizens in their regions, and the Roman Pontus also faced the same policies.

Throughout history,   thousands of examples can define that the authorities and the occupation imposed these policies on the people.

Turkey’s role in building Israeli settlements

Turkey invested the Israeli-Palestinian conflict to increase its profits, by building settlements on Palestinian lands, ignoring international norms and conventions, with regard to supporting settlement growth that followed the 1967 war.

The first Turkish contracting companies arrived in Israel in the 1990s, according to a mutual ownership agreement between the two parties in 1996, due to the Israeli need to greatly increase residential buildings in order to be able to accommodate the Jewish immigration coming from the countries of the former Soviet Union.

Among those companies is the Turkish company Yilmazlar, which the Israeli newspaper Haaretz described as the most successful contracting company involved in building settlements.

The work, which began as a small activity, developed in the mid-nineties, with the support of the Israeli government and security agreements for mutual purchase in 2002, including the Offset agreement, which stipulates in exchange for improving the Israeli military industry for Turkish tanks, Turkey is working to secure 800 workers to work in the Israeli construction branch.

In one of the official statements of a representative of the company under the name of Jayyus to the media, the latter noted that the diplomatic crises between Turkey and Israel only affect newspaper headlines , but the volume of trade between the two countries amounts to billions of shekels.

In this regard, a member of the Presidency Council of the Syrian Democratic Council, Mari Al-Shibli, said in a statement to ANHA that the history of the Ottomans is full of betrayals and treachery in the Middle East and the spread of backwardness, and all that the region witnessed in terms of wars, massacres and destruction is the result of the Ottoman occupation of the region about a century ago.

He notes that the presence of Turkish drones in the recent battles to bomb Gaza only indicates the unlimited support that Turkey provides militarily to Israel, according to geopolitical bargains that satisfy both sides.

Afrin and the settlement series

On the 17th of last May, our agency published a report entitled "Afrin ... the city that lies under the yoke of occupation and extermination continues to resist." It included the most prominent documented settlement projects that Turkey is working on to change the demography of the region in general.

Report link: /ar/haber/afrynalmdynh-alty-tqba-tht-nyr-alahtlal-walibadh-mstmrhon-fy-almqawmh-h50291.html

Perhaps the most prominent thing that is reported in general is the tightening of the noose on the members of the Yazidi community by building a settlement gathering at the foot of the mountain of the village of Paflouna, which is dominated by the Yazidi population. The link of the news that Hawar previously published in this regard: https: /ar/haber/alahtlal-altrky-wfy-itar-syasat-alibadh-waltghyyr-aldymghrafy-ymna-iyzydyy-qryh-baflywn-mn-alawdh-h50180.html

In this context, the Egyptian journalist who specialized in foreign affairs, Sayed Mustafa, said during a special statement to ANHA that the processes of demographic change began in Afrin through looting "with Turkey's invasion of the city, and we have seen the video scenes documenting thefts and breaking storefronts."

Mustafa continued his speech by referring to Turkey's lifting of repressive measures in order to increase the pace of displacement of Kurds from the region, especially the members of the Yazidi community, pointing at the same time that the Christian religion suffered the same crimes in the city.

Article 49 of the Fourth Geneva Convention states that the occupying power "may not deport or transfer part of the civilian population to the territories it occupies."

As for a member of the Presidential Council of the Mari Al-Shibli Mosque, he comments on the subject, saying: “Erdogan, under the leadership of the Justice and Development Party, is trying to restore the legacy of backwardness and discrimination that the Ottomans practiced, noting that Erdogan sees fighting the Autonomous Administration under the name of national security as being within the protection of the Ottoman era in eliminating any liberation thought. In the region, from the time of the liberation revolutions to the present day. "

Qatar and Kuwait .. the most prominent supporters of the settlement plans in Afrin

Mari Al-Shibli says that the dangerous matter today is to work on building settlements in occupied Afrin with Qatari and Kuwaiti support, “which I fear will be a demographic change more than we expect, by bringing those who describe them as the 48 naturalized Israeli Arabs to deport them from Palestine to Afrin. This is not just a demographic change. Rather, it is a complete change of the population structure, which thus poses a threat to the history of the region's components. "

The Civil Documentation Center for Palestinian Refugees in Northern Syria said on 2/15/2020 that the number of Palestinian settlers in northern Syria amounted to about 7,500 settlers, who were brought in from the camps of Daraa, Homs, Aleppo and Yarmouk.

Al-Shibli did not rule out the existence of Israeli-Turkish understandings with the participation of its allies regarding such dangerous settlement projects in the Syrian city of Afrin, at the expense of the indigenous population.

Kuwait has openly and openly supported the reconstruction of the "Kuwait Al-Rahma" residential village, which contributes to changing the demography of Afrin in the countryside of Aleppo, and the project is being established in the Mahmoudiya neighborhood with the aim of settling displaced persons from several Syrian regions and cities from the families of mercenaries loyal to Turkey.

For his part, Sayed Mustafa says that the main goal of building settlements is to pass a policy of Turkification through education and others to obliterate the Kurdish identity and the roots of the Kurdish people in this region.

The Egyptian journalist, who specializes in foreign affairs, Sayed Mustafa, at the end of his speech, predicted an increase in the number of settlements inside Afrin in the coming period, as Turkey wants to use Afrin as housing for the displaced instead of its lands, especially after the strikes suffered by the Justice and Development Party in the recent elections, and the growing trend against immigrants in Turkey and the West in general, at the expense of the indigenous people of Afrin.

In spite of all these data, reports and documentation, the international community is dominated in this period by the character of the League of Nations as a formal organization that did not present the requirements of it, which is the main reason for its demise at the end of 1945.

As for the Syrian mercenaries of Turkey who are implementing its agendas in the region, Abd al-Rahman bin Khaldoun's saying applies to them when he said: “The defeated is always fond of following the example of the majority in his slogan, his uniform, his bees, and all his conditions and returns.” Their grandparents were freed from the Ottomans, but the grandchildren became lovers of their tormentors.

ANHA